The object of the study was the lexical material of the first volume of the «Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language» edited by D. N. Ushakov. The purpose of the study was to conduct a comprehensive analysis of nouns naming a female person. The results of the study will allow in the future to identify the features and trends in the ways of naming female persons, the statics and dynamics of their use in speech from the point of view of stylistic norms, as well as to determine their status in the Russian literary language. As a result of the semantic, stylistic, etymological, comparative lexical analysis of nouns naming a female person conclusions were drawn: there are 15 lexical and semantic groups of nouns naming a female person by profession, nationality /nationality, place of residence, religious beliefs, title etc. were identified. It was found that a large number of obsolete words were included in the dictionary. A special place is occupied by dialectal and colloquial names of women. Etymological analysis showed that most of the names of female persons are of native Russian origin, formed in a word-formation way using suffixes, partly in a metaphorical way. Some of the words are borrowed entirely from French, Latin, etc. Russian languages, the other part has a borrowed root, but the word itself is formed in the Russian language with the help of Russian suffixes. It is argued that some of the nouns naming a female person by profession, position, occupation are not recorded in modern explanatory dictionaries because of their status in the SRL - «outdated» or they are abnormal (dialectal, colloquial).